Oh, Reuben, Reuben, Reuben…you have NO idea how much you made me guffaw with this. Thank you for this read, really. Loved your essay, right from the opening paragraph. Your written wit is a delight to both eyes and brain!
It unearthed a pearl of a personal story I had long forgotten. It’s a bit long, but quite funny and totally on point to your own. You’ll understand and appreciate it, I’m sure.
You’ll understand the co(s)mic irony. :)
When I was 16, I decided to weaponize music and would only listen to albums with «Parental Advisory» tags on them. Cue, of course, Frank Zappa – undisputed king and musical genius – but cue also N.W.A’s «She Swallowed It» (and many others, with a special obscene shout out to Ice-T as well.) Below is the…uhm…very morally dubious lyric video.
My father, an eternal lover of comedy, was somewhat more tolerant than my mother, and able to see that it was so out there and brazen, it could only be a joke song…yet where you had to contend with your father’s fury, so I did with my mother’s, at the end of months of incessantly obnoxious gangster rap – and the above song – played at every occasion possible, and much protested about by Mum, to no avail.
Never one to make a scene, there was one evening when she flipped…and I mean flipped. We’re talking comedic cinematic breakdown here (only later I would find the reasons why, and they weren’t too funny, bless her – read on.)
One night after dinner, I was playing the tape in my room, SUPER loud, of course. She walked in, acting all normal and quiet; she calmly walked over to the stereo without uttering a word, then pressed eject, threw the tape on the floor and proceeded to do a kitten-heeled dance of rage on it, reducing it to splinters as I sat dumbstruck and slack-jawed, arms vaguely outsretched.
What followed it was such a rant, I remember it pretty much verbatim, give or take, to this very day.
Through clenched teeth, as she stomped, she was mumbling like a mad person, which became louder and louder until audible.
«Pussy, tits, dick, pussy, tits, dick, PUSSY TITS DICK!!!!! I don’t get, I just don’t get it! Is this ALL that men…boys…YOU LOT…is this ALL there is for you, sticking your todgers in every available wet hole, for fuck’s sake (she actually said «todgers,» and she actually swore, which never happened)!»
Gesticulating wildly, shrugging and walking back and forth, she continued, looking up to the ceiling, as if addressing God, or the entity responsible misogyny.
«And…and…I mean…tell me, where did I go wrong? Why is my own son, who I tried SO hard to educate and teach good, humane values to turning into a misogynistic woman hating retard?!»
Then, turning to me, she shot her trembling index finger at me in accusation.
«YOU…of all people, I thought you’d be smarter…You love poetry…I mean… you…you write poetry…how can you listen to THIS? I want to erase this from my head, but I practically know all the lyrics and I can’t, it’s driving me insane! Don’t you even realize how serious this is?! How OFFENSIVE this is to women? This is the complete annihilation of EVERYTHING that women have always fought for, and it’s proof that we’ve FAILED!!!»
And with this, she sat on the bed, drained by her own shouting, reduced to a sobbing mess.
«We failed…I failed…why does any of this still even exist?»
Never having seen my mother like that, I was so terrified, I started to cry too. I sat next to her and hugged her, as she awkwardly wept away at the tears, and I profusely apologized, vowing to never play that song again, or anything from NWA, within earshot. I didn’t even try to defend the song. I was too shocked. Feeling equally awkward my mother apologized for the name calling and swearing, but not for her feelings about the song, and blamed her verbose reaction on a rough day and too much wine.
It was only sometime later that I would discover just how ouch! a summer of «She Swallowed It» had been for her.
Get ready to cringe: my father had been having an affair for quite some time, and she had just been told that much by a friend of hers who saw him & the mistress together. At the time of her outburst, I would later learn, she hadn’t even confronted him yet.
So, in a way, Consolidated’s «You Suck» stands, literally, as a sister track to «She Swallowed It,» except that it’s actually good humored, and not as socio-politically hard-core and morally dubious at points.
Sometimes, when we’re teens, I often wonder which head dictates certain musical choices… LOL.
Thank you for unearthing this comical pearl about just how much we derange and torment our parents as teenagers. From the heart, brother! :)))))
Yours, long-windedly,
P.
